Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Let us ask an interesting question. Why must we vote?
In the first place you voting do not necessarily mean that the candidate that you choose will be your representative in parliament. There are hundreds of thousands of other voters just like you that all prefer an individual. The aggregate may or may not coincide with your personal choice, so in effect, the power of the vote is power for the masses not the individual. More interesting is the question whether will your vote really count? Even in the closest of elections, witness the Potong Pasir count last time around, will have differences in the hundreds. So how will the result change with or without the your vote?
Of course, there will be detractors who propose that if everyone believes that voting is irrelevant then no one will vote and then the whole affair will be a farce. But the probability of no one voting at all is zero. Just as air molecule have a possibility of having zero velocity, but the root mean square of any sample of air molecule must be much larger than zero, in the same way, the assertion that no one will vote is quite impossible. Even when there is a low voter turnout, it is quite absurd to suggest that a single vote will determine the winner. There will still be a margin and the question of how my vote will affect the margin is the crucial question. Unfortunately, since the margin is more than one, my vote do not seem to matter.
On another note, it will be interesting to add a non-vote in the election, similar to the recent elections in Thailand. To see if the PAP and the opposition can fight off the null choice is interesting. Of course this has happened before, in the '60s and '70s, where the non-vote is tearing up your ballot paper, but a official non-vote is a means of legitimizing the whole affair. The PAP wants a mandate? Then perhaps they should put themselves up against the null vote and see if 'nothing' is better then the status quo. At any rate, it will help to differentiate whether are Singaporeans really contented with the government, where they will vote the PAP; or are Singaporeans disillusioned by the opposition, where the null vote serves as a vote of no-confidence to the PAP while saying that the opposition is not good enough.
(Incidentally, either way, your vote still don't matter, its power for the masses, so if you want your individual rights go support for other political systems.)
10:57 PM
